Optimism, utopia, and blue-green futures for the archaeology of Oceania

Oceania covers approximately one-third of the Earth’s surface, while containing about 2% of its landmass, even including the relatively large islands of Aotearoa-New Zealand, Australia, and New Guinea. While various forms of ‘green utopias’ have been proposed, explored, and critically interrogated as propositions or possibilities within sustainable and just futures (e.g. Jaeckle 2013), they tend to centre on an assumption of continental residence. Thus a blue-green approach for Oceania becomes necessary, to take in the vast expanse of saltwater that is the defining feature of the region. An Oceanic utopia would be one in which human beings live within the planetary limits of the ocean world, while also allowing a level of material comfort, local and regional interconnectedness, and indeed joy in the realm of everyday life. What could archaeology contribute to a movement towards Oceanic blue-green utopias during the next 50 years?

A telling observation of the current zeitgeist is the widespread prevalence of dystopia in visions for the future, something visible across contemporary media such as video games, film, and television. Climate change, pandemics, creeping fascism: take your pick of horrible possibilities to feature in near or distant futures. In Oceania this is often expressed in visions of sinking islands, societal chaos, and cascading disasters as the inevitable destiny of the region. One worrying side effect of the dystopian mindset is that, in addition to reflecting an overall pessimism stemming from the present moment, human beings could end up stuck in a cycle of only imagining dystopias for ourselves. This tendency makes it extremely difficult to propose alternatives, including a need for utopian futures as a corrective, positive and creative approach.

With that in mind, I present some ideas for what an optimistic future might look like in the archaeology of Oceania, which I take to mean the islands and ocean within the Pacific region, including Australia which has over 4,000 km of Pacific coastline. One of the contradictions of working from a point of view of optimism is that it simultaneously includes an identification and critical interrogation of some of the problems we face as archaeologists, as well as the many issues facing Oceania as a region.

Instead of broad (and some would say naïve) idealism, I offer a measured perspective on what archaeology currently does, and what it could do, for Oceanic communities, human and non-human alike (many Oceanic worldviews don’t reify the human/nonhunan distinction). My criticisms and suggestions of alternatives for Oceanic archaeology come from what bell hooks calls ‘a place of hope’ (hooks and Lowens 2011): the belief that although things appear problematic, bleak even, from the perspective of the present, there is still the possibility of changing course towards something better.

Defining what that ‘better future’ might look like is often the sticking point in activist circles, so I’ll lay my ideas out with the caveat that many people would (and in the case of Oceanic peoples, should) probably disagree with, revise, or reframe my conceptualisations or recommendations. My ideas about archaeology and the future stem from the premise that people must slow and eventually reverse capitalism’s runaway destruction of the environment and trampling of all the truly enjoyable aspects of human social life. I believe that archaeology can contribute towards projects of what some scholars call ‘degrowth,’ a rebuilding of economies and societies around an ethos of care, conviviality, and commons in which a good life is possible for all (see Flexner 2020).

I’m sceptical of the notion that archaeologists somehow ‘solve’ humanity’s capitalist-created, climate change-associated problems in any kind of simple way. It does not follow that because we can discover how people lived within or transformed their environment in the distant or recent past, that we can somehow translate that directly to meaningful changes in ecological practice in the present. There is simply too much missing information in the archaeological record, as well as too many things that would be impossible to truly resurrect from times gone by. Our information about the past can certainly inform approaches to environmental management today, but this information needs to be used carefully and reflexively.

I’m also not totally convinced that archaeology contributes to better futures directly through our positive relationships with living communities, especially Indigenous communities. Good ‘community archaeology’ can definitely open up a space for alternative ways of doing things beyond what is typically allowable under capitalism and the state. But the majority of what archaeologists do within the current framework ultimately serves and propagates the goals of current political economy, particularly where our projects fall in one way or another into the broader hegemony promoted under the concept of ‘development’ (e.g. Zorzin 2014).

This is not to say I would be against many of the communities in Oceania wanting to improve the material conditions under which they live. There is absolutely a need throughout the Oceanic region, including many parts of remote Australia, for people to create more resilient and easier-to-access transportation networks, modes of communication, forms of resource management, healthy and tasty foodwebs, institutions for health and education, and housing stock. However, these things cannot be instituted using a Eurocentric, capitalist, ‘one size fits all’ approach (Escobar 2015). Instead, communities need the autonomy to approach development in their own, culturally and ecologically appropriate ways (UN’s so-called ‘sustainable development goals’ be damned!).

At best, archaeology and archaeologists can play a supporting role in this dynamic. Our knowledge of the timing and direction of colonisation events, human impacts and transformation of local ecologies, and the materialisation of many forms of social order and authority in Oceania can offer effective critical perspectives to understand past and present as well as possible futures. But they are only effective when we communicate them to the right audiences and in the right ways. Further, archaeologists cannot simply assume that our only role is to transmit factual information as ‘experts.’ The next 50 years give us ample opportunity to step aside, be undermined, and have the knowledge we produce be reshaped, and redirected towards and for the purposes of Oceanic peoples (Kawelu 2015; Reynolds and Wheeler 2022).

A step in this direction involves better incorporating the theoretical concepts and languages that originate in the region, as Marshall (2021) has suggested for the Māori term whakapapa in Aotearoa-New Zealand. This kind of linguistic move of course risks becoming a form of empty appropriation, where archaeologists appear receptive to many voices without fundamentally changing who enters the discipline. For Oceanic archaeology to have any kind of future, it must also bring in more Oceanic peoples, not only as disciplinary specialists and professionals but also as collaborators and co-conspirators in the many utopian projects that need doing across the region.

In short, Oceanic archaeology needs creative troublemakers, not only to help the discipline emerge from its squalid legacies of colonist and capitalist extraction and exploitation (yes, still!), but also to do the work of the visionary and even trickster on the ground (with a nod to the Vanuatu culture hero Mwatiktiki) to find ways to change an array of systems that are arranged against any kind of utopian change. Because it is utopian vision that is needed in this space, not only to imagine but also to bring about a blue-green world in which people can live peacefully and convivially.

Ultimately it is up to the peoples of Oceania to determine what kind of future they want. We can only hope they choose one that is durable and joyful, in which people live with ocean and land in a way that doesn’t exploit or degrade. The current pathway of capitalist ‘growth’ leads only towards a rust and plastic future of pollution and extinction in a world that, if not uninhabitable, will at least be seriously unpleasant (Kallis 2018:1–2). It is beyond time for people to shift course, even if it means tacking against the wind in rough currents for some of the voyage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.